Caylon Hann working to restore winning ways to Page football
It was August 1992, and Hurricane Andrew wasn't expected to hit Homestead, Florida, but Clarence Hann swiftly put shutter boards up to protect their home as the Category 5 redirected toward south Florida.
Caylon Hann, then just 5 years old, vividly remembers being inside the house and in the dark during a power outage as the most destructive storm to hit the state of Florida caused the neighbors to flee to his house as the roof of their home came off.
The next day, Caylon went outside to see the impact of the storm that killed 65 fatalities and caused an estimated $27.3 billion in damages. The homes in his neighborhood weren't under water, but there was enough flooding for Hann's brother to capture on videotape while in a boat.
"Hurricane Andrew was a crazy experience, and it definitely helped mold me into who I am today," said Hann, who is in his first season as Page football coach. "Because people who have never seen a Category 5 hurricane have no idea what it is like going through it. You don't think you are going to get through it in that moment because it is very scary, but after the rain, there is always a sunshine."
Growing up in Homestead, he was overlooked as a football player, playing junior varsity as a junior and mostly sidelined as a senior before eventually becoming a member of the UNC Pembroke Athletics Hall of Fame.
As a coach, Hann spent seven years at T.W. Andrews then the last three seasons at Page under Doug Robertson prior to being announced as the new head coach on Dec. 21.
Hann took over a Pirates program whose history includes five NCHSAA state championships but is in search of its first winning record since going 11-2 in 2017. In his first three games as head coach, the Pirates lost 53-7 to Dudley, 41-21 to Reidsville and 48-6 to Mount Tabor, before winning 55-12 over Southwest Guilford on Sept. 20 and 30-6 over Ragsdale on Friday.
"All throughout life, you get pushed back so many times, you face adversity so many times and me coming out of high school, I wanted to be a baseball player," Hann said. "It didn't work out the way that I wanted it to, so it took a few years for me to get rolling, but once I got rolling, it was good. So being in that time before helped prepare me to stay focused and endure the times that are rough because you just can't just come out and start off winning."
The coach said that as a boy he was viewed more as a baseball player than football player. In the football hotbed of Miami-Dade County, there were children who were bigger, faster and could throw a ball farther, perhaps giving him a false sense of his worth being surrounded by so much talent.
Hann went to three different high schools, which is why he isn't against current players transferring if it's in their best interest. As a junior at Homestead, junior varsity football coach Paul Bronis gave him a shot at quarterback, but Hann's mother wasn't satisfied with him just being on JV and made the decision to have him transfer to Homestead, where he played two games at quarterback as a senior on varsity.
However, baseball appeared to be more promising, influencing the decision to have him transfer to Killian for the second semester of his senior year. There, he was a talented center fielder for Killian, which in 2004 lost the Class 6A state championship game, 2-1, to Weston Cypress Bay.
In high school, Hann's baseball talent garnered interest from Florida State, but it was said that his bat wasn't quite good enough to earn a spot for one of the nation's top programs. A showing at the Seminoles camp didn't land him a scholarship, but it did put him on the recruiting radar and he eventually went to Bethune-Cookman with word that he could earn a scholarship but that it wasn't a guarantee.
"It was like a preferred walk-on kind of deal, but nothing was promised," Hann said. "It was 'Yes, let me give you a shot,' and it just didn't seem as promised as I thought when I got there and I was getting pull from football players. I was like 'If baseball won't work, let's see what football has in store,' so it didn't take me long to say 'Coach, let's shake hands and part ways. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to see what I can do on the football field.'"
According to legend, Hann's success at quarterback during Bethune-Cookman intramural action made actual Bethune-Cookman players interested in him joining the real team and a Division I program at that. That spring in 2007, he showed signs of potential, throwing passes to Eric Weems, who went on to 11 seasons in the NFL and earned a first team all-pro nod in 2010.
Hann's experience gave him optimism about playing football, but he also didn't envision getting on the field in games. Paying for his education, he also realized that UNC Pembroke, who was just starting a football program, would only cost him about $12 thousand in tuition versus the $20 thousand he was paying for Bethune-Cookman.
With that, he emailed UNC Pembroke coach Pete Shinnick, who sent him a response. From there, Hann redshirted and didn't play due to transfer rules in Pembroke's inaugural 2007 season. However, the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder did earn Scout Team Player of the Year at quarterback.
Despite scout team success, the decision was made to have Hann move to defensive back, with his dual-threat athleticism and the two quarterbacks above him on the depth chart staying at the position.
"You saw him running zone read option stuff and he had good quickness, a good change of direction and was a very feisty player," said OC Williams, the Pembroke defensive backs coach at the time, who is now the assistant head coach, defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator at Fort Valley State. "So we move him over to defense and in practice, he would get a lot of interceptions and at first, we were saying 'Well, shoot, he was getting the interceptions because he knew what the offense was doing.'"
Hann didn't start that 2008 opener against Brevard but entered mid-game and had two of his seven interceptions on the season, which tied for third nationally. The free safety went on to record 13 picks in his career, a school record, and would be inducted into the school's athletics hall of fame in 2021.
Hann got some looks from the NFL after college and trained at Cris Carter's FAST facility. The NFL lockout in 2011 in combination with his 40-yard dash time of 4.54 instead of 4.45 were his reasons why his pro prospects didn't pan out.
After football, he worked jobs in fitness and retail in the Miami area. However, he wanted to leave that city, and former UNC Pembroke teammate and roommate Alex Boykin, his current Page offensive coordinator, gave him a place to live in Greensboro as he took a new job.
"I didn't want to be in Miami," Hann said. "Miami is a rough place. It's just rough, a dog-eat-dog world down there and North Carolina has always done good for me. I just said 'Hey, what the heck, it may do good for me with my next realm of life' and they did exactly that."
Within a couple months, one of Hann's co-workers, a volleyball assistant at Andrews, saw good traits in him and convinced him to coach football there. He initially worked under Rodney McKoy from spring 2014 and then continued with the Red Raiders through the spring 2021 season, with his last two seasons being the Red Raiders' defensive coordinator.
After the spring 2021 season, he shifted to Page, even if it meant going from coordinator to position coach.
"For one, I moved three miles away from Page. That was the start," Hann said. "I was still driving to Andrews. For two, there was an administrator who knew they had an opening here at Page, he knew I stayed close to Page and he also knew that I would probably be decent or good at Page, so he called me and asked me 'Did I want to come to Page?' The third thing that brought me here was THAT name. Are you kidding me? Back when I didn't know what Greensboro was, I knew what Page was."
Hann served as a varsity assistant, in addition to leading the JV team to 6-4 records in each of the past two seasons. Under Robertson, he learned organization, how to assemble a staff and wants to maintain Robertson's old-school toughness as the new head coach.
"Coach Rob is one tough cut," Hann said. "He is tough. I remember times where it was cold outside, he is out there. If it was bloodshot raining, he didn't budge. Even myself, I was running under to get some shelter when it was raining at times, but he wouldn't move and those were some qualities that I want to take from him and utilize and I won't forget those days."
Page took tough losses to start the season but said the win over Southwest demonstrated that team is moving in the right direction prior to Friday's game against Ragsdale. The first three games were against teams all ranked in the top five in the current Triad Rankings , but Hann also mentioned the addition of receiver Kasai Poindexter, who was out due to a shoulder injury and made his debut against Southwest, and the emergence of freshman athlete Zion Malloy.
Hann said an intense approach to practice is a sign of growth.
"Seeing those guys go out there and compete in practice and seeing those guys work hard in practice, no matter the conditions, whether it's muddy, whether it is raining, whether our uniforms are not washed, whatever the case may be, those guys are coming to practice ready to get better," Hann said.
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